T

urkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will discuss a range of economic issues and counterterrorism with President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo during his three-day state visit in the capital.

Erdogan, who touched down Thursday night, is accompanied by a delegation of Turkish business leaders, as well as Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu, Transport Minister Feridun Bilgin, Economic Minister Nihat Zeybekci and Energy Minister Taner Yildiz.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said the visit would be primarily focused on economic and sociocultural issues, including the attendance of Erdogan at the Indonesia-Turkey Business Forum.

'€œTurkey remains a strategic partner for Indonesia and we have an excellent economic relationship with each other. Recent news regarding Indonesia and Turkey usually involved reports of Indonesians trying to cross the Turkish border into Syria. But I assure you, our relationship is far greater than those incidents,'€ he told reporters at the Foreign Ministry on Thursday.

During his visit, Arrmanatha explained, Erdogan would hold a public lecture and visit the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, Istiqlal Mosque.

Erdogan had commented previously that Indonesia served as Turkey'€™s largest trade partner in the Far East and were internationally intertwined in platforms such as the G20, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the MIKTA (Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey and Australia) pact.

He was also quoted by the Turkish presidential website as saying that Turkey '€œhas elevated relations with Indonesia to the level of a historical partnership'€.

Indonesia also aims to boost its export numbers to Turkey by more than double in the next four years, with a target of US$3.87 billion.

Arrmanatha noted that Turkish-Indonesian trade reached $2.5 billion in 2014.

Indonesia is Erdogan'€™s second stop on his Asian tour after China. He will then continue his visit to Pakistan on Saturday.

Beforehand, Erdogan and his Chinese counterparts have agreed to strengthen cooperation in fighting terror and people smuggling. following friction between the two over Uighurs from China'€™s Xinjiang who have fled to Turkey.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority that calls Xinjiang home, have left China in recent years, travelling to Turkey via Southeast Asia, having first illegally crossed the Chinese border.

Rights groups say such migrants are fleeing ethnic violence in far western Xinjiang and Chinese controls on their religion and culture.

Hundreds of people have died in unrest in Xinjiang in the last three years, blamed by Beijing on Islamist militants.

This month, Thailand deported 109 Uighurs to China, sparking anger in Turkey, home to a large Uighur diaspora, and feeding concern among rights groups and the United States that they could be mistreated upon their return.

'€œSecurity and law enforcement cooperation is an important area for the two countries and both have agreed to strengthen cooperation,'€ Chinese deputy foreign minister Zhang Ming told reporters, after President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan met in Beijing.

Neither mentioned the issue in comments before reporters.